Life in 600 words or less: In 1913, the publisher Conde Nast had a problem. He'd recently acquired a magazine called Dress, bought the name of another one, Vanity Fair, and combined the two into Dress & Vanity Fair. Ungainly as its title was, that wasn't the magazine's only failing. It also lacked a clear editorial direction, or at least one that satisfied Nast. He decided to consult his friend Frank Crowninshield on the matter.

November 22, 2008

Quote: “An editor should believe in his magazine. The trouble is many of them don’t. You see all sorts of balderdash in the appeals they make to their readers. ‘Our readers edit our magazine. It is they who tell us what to put in.’ That is the sort of thing politicians say to their constituents. It is worse than nonsense. It is a lie.”

Another one: “At the heart of the competitive system is a wild and whirling center, where dog eats dog, and throats are cut with suavity and dispatch. Very close to the heart of the tempest lies the magazine business.”

Life in 200 words or less: The Atlantic Monthly was already over half a century old when Ellery Sedgwick became its editor in 1909, fulfilling an ambition he had supposedly harbored since his sophomore year of college. Though he had worked for several other magazines, Sedgwick didn’t waste any time climbing the Atlantic’s masthead; instead, he bought the magazine and soon installed himself as its chief editor.

Unlike many magazine owners who fancy themselves as editors, however, Sedgwick was the real thing. As the New York Times noted on his death, “Sedgwick directed the magazine, then of small circulation, so that it grew into a national social and political force.”

Frederick Lewis Allen, an author and onetime editor of Harper’s, said Sedgwick intended that his magazine “face the whole of life, its riddles, its adventures; the critical questions of the day, the problems of the human heart; and that no subject should be taboo if only it were discussed with urbanity.”

Sedgwick would hold the job for 30 years and sell the magazine the following year. He titled his memoirs, “The Happy Profession,” by which he meant magazine editing.

For more: “The Happy Profession” (Little, Brown and Co.), which Sedgwick published in 1946, covers his Atlantic years as well as earlier stints at magazines such as Leslie’s Monthly and McClure’s. His papers are at the Massachusetts Historical Society. Incidentally, other members of the accomplished Sedgwick clan include the writer John, the actress Kyra, and the ill-fated but much-publicized Andy Warhol protégé, Edie. -- Greg Daugherty, 11/08

November 15, 2008

Quote: “Editors have to be constantly on the prowl for new facts, new trends, new perceptions, new arenas. They have to recognize critical issues early enough to be able to sound an alert.”

Quote above, continued: “They shouldn't have to wait until major events bulge into public view before taking notice. Nor need they fear going back for a second or third look; there may be odd pieces of history left lying around to be discerned, pieces that, when put together, may change the contours of an event, or at least our understanding of it.”

Life in 300 words or less: Norman Cousins is the rare example of a magazine editor who became well known in his own field, then even better known in a completely different one.

Still in his early 20s, Cousins took charge of The Saturday Review in 1942 and edited it until 1977, with the exception of a couple of years in the early 1970s when he left in a dispute with the magazine’s then-owners. During that three-decade stretch, he built the title from 20,000 circulation to more than 600,000.

Cousins positioned The Saturday Review as a magazine of ideas, not normally thought of as a growth proposition, then or now. But, as he traveled and lectured throughout the U.S., he saw a potential audience. The New York Times quoted him as saying, “there was a new breed in America, people who were business executives, or in science, say, who were interested in ideas but not in intellectual cliques or literary gossip. I recognized that this was one of the most exciting intellectual developments of our times--but its manifestations hadn’t been acted upon by those in the world of communications.”

His second career was more a matter of accident. Stricken by a crippling disease in 1964, he determined to cure himself with high doses of vitamin C and laughter, primarily induced by Marx Brothers movies. He waited years to write about it, saying he didn’t want to give others false hope. But when he finally published his book “Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient” in 1979, it became a bestseller and he became a national celebrity. There soon followed what is perhaps the highest honor ever received by any magazine editor, a made-for-TV movie based on his life.

For more: Cousins wrote several autobiographical books. The one with the most to say about magazine work is probably “Human Options: An Autobiographical Notebook” (Norton, 1981). To see him in action, there’s this interview on YouTube. Coincidentally, I saw Cousins speak in 1976 or ’77, and while I don’t recall a word he said, I do remember that he looked really, really healthy. -- Greg Daugherty, 11/08

November 08, 2008

Claim to fame: Founding editor of Esquire, buddy of Fitzgerald and Hemingway, and, in the estimation of the New York Times, “one of the greatest living fly fishermen.”

Quote: “The hardest part of an editor’s job is just this: to learn the trick of not letting what you do know keep you from finding out what you don’t know.”

Another quote: “He edits best who edits least.”

Still another: “We wanted, always, to feel that the reader could never feel sure, as he turned from one page to the next and one issue to the next, of what might be coming up.”

OK, one more: “[E]diting, unlike anything else that I can think of offhand, is a thing that you can learn to do too well. This is one field in which experience can be a handicap.”

Life in 300 words or less: Michigan-born and bred Arnold Gingrich began his magazine career editing a fashion trade title, Apparel Arts, which he and longtime business partners David A. Smart and William H. Weintraub soon transformed into Gentleman’s Quarterly, today’s GQ.

In 1933, they conceived of a new men’s quarterly “dedicated to the enjoyment and improvement of the new leisure.” Their timing may not have seemed ideal: 1933 was one of the darkest years of the Great Depression, and the only “new leisure” many men were experiencing was unemployment.

They considered calling the magazine Trend, Stag, Beau, Trim, and Town and Campus, but settled on Esquire, supposedly inspired by the “Esq.” on the stationery of the lawyer hired to check whether those other titles were taken. Esquire was a success from its first issue and went monthly the following year.

Gingrich and his partners launched other titles, including Ken, a progressive current events magazine, and Coronet, an artsy digest-size number, but none would achieve the same success or longevity as Esquire. Its breakthrough editorial mix of men’s fashion, scantily clad women, and name-brand authors would also inspire a young writer in Esquire’s promotion department named Hugh M. Hefner to fantasize his own magazine. When Esquire moved its headquarters from Chicago to New York City in the early 1950s, the Hef stayed behind and soon begat Playboy.

For more: Gingrich wrote or edited nine books in all, at least two of which are autobiographical: “Toys of a Lifetime” (Knopf, 1966) and “Nothing But People” (Crown, 1971). Esquire's blog also offers this timeline of the magazine's history. -- Greg Daugherty, 11/08

November 01, 2008

Claim to fame: Edited major and minor magazines but is best remembered for turning McCall’s into a state-of-the art mass-market title of the late 1950s and ‘60s.

Quote: “Editors become editors by editing.”

Another one: “The prime objective of a magazine is to survive.”

Life in 300 words or so: A high school dropout, at age 15, Mayes rose through magazine after magazine, first trade titles like American Druggist, then consumer ones. He became editor of Pictorial Review, at that time a big-deal magazine, in 1934, and of Good Housekeeping in 1938. He held that job for 20 years, before becoming editor of McCall’s in 1958.

Taking over McCall’s at age 58, Mayes decided to remake it totally and on two fronts, bringing in the best and highest paid writers as well as their peers in photography and illustration. Certainly it didn’t hurt that his boss, the millionaire conglomerate owner, art collector, and philanthropist Norton Simon had signed for Mayes what was essentially a blank check. “Forget about budgets,” Mayes remembered Simon telling him, “spend what you need, don’t be afraid to spend.”

When’s the last time any of us heard an instruction like that?

Mayes retired from McCall’s in 1965 but wasn’t through with editing. In 1974, the syndicated newspaper columnist Bob Considine reported that Mayes was publishing a London-based fortnightly called The Overseas American, packed with such timely information as the impact of the energy crisis on Scandinavian prostitutes.

An interesting glimpse of Mayes appears in Judith Krantz’s 2000 memoir, “Sex & Shopping.” Long before she became a popular novelist, she took a job with Mayes, a family friend, then editing Good Housekeeping. Recalled Krantz, “He was a giant among perfectionists, he was unrelenting in his criticism, he barked the most unbelievably insulting things to people, he had no sensitivity to any feelings, no matter how justified, his progress down a hall of the magazine was preceded by a wave of fear, editorial meetings were mass anxiety attacks. His employees spent entire lunches whispering together, comparing monster stories about him.” Otherwise she seems to have liked him.

Mayes died in 1987, at age 87.

For more: Mayes’s memoir, “The Magazine Maze: A Prejudiced Perspective” (Doubleday, 1980), has more to say about the art, science, and voodoo of editing than any other such book I’ve read. His quotes above come from it. An interesting account of McCall’s in the messy post-Mayes years is included in Ed Fitzgerald’s memoir, “A Nickel an Inch” (Atheneum, 1986). Fitzgerald, who will probably be covered here at a later date, was also the editor of Sport magazine. In the meantime, Sport fans may enjoy this Web site. -- Greg Daugherty, 11/08

October 25, 2008

Claim to fame: Founder of St. Nicholas, probably the most influential and beloved children’s magazine ever. She also wrote the children's book “Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates.”

Quote: “The child’s magazine must not be a milk-and-water variety of the adult’s periodical.”

Observation: “[T]he more ‘new life’ there is in a magazine, the less there is left in its editor.”

Life in 400 words or less: Mary Elizabeth Mapes was born into the magazine business. Her father, James Jay Mapes, founded one called Working Farmer and later owned another called United States Journal. Married at 20 and widowed at 27, with two children, the now-Mrs. Dodge supported her family as a writer and editor until 1873 when Scribner’s hired her to start a new children’s magazine. She named it “St. Nicholas” and went on to edit it for the next 32 years.

“St. Nicholas” was a children’s magazine like nothing before it. Dodge saw it as a sanctuary for schoolchildren who were “strained and taxed with the day’s lessons.” In an essay, she wrote that, children “want to have their own way over their own magazine. They want to enter the one place where they may come and go as they please, where they are not obliged to mind, or say ‘yes, ma’m’ and ‘yes, sir,’--where, in short, they can live a brand-new, free life of their own for a little while…”

Dodge ran children’s letters, answered their questions in an advice column, and published their writing and artwork. Readers could join the St. Nicholas League, which sponsored contests and bestowed much-coveted gold and silver badges on the winners.

Among the writers who received some of their earliest encouragement from the League: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Rachel Carson, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Eudora Welty.

E.B.White, himself a member, wrote in a 1934 essay, “There is no doubt about it, the fierce desire to write and paint that burns in our land today, the incredible amount of writing and painting that still goes on in the face of heavy odds, are directly traceable to the St. Nicholas Magazine.” The magazine historian Theodore Peterson observed that, “St. Nicholas seems to have inspired a loyalty bordering on fanaticism in its young readers.”

After Dodge’s death in 1905, St. Nicholas continued under other editors and owners into the 1940s, by which time the magic was gone.

For more: A biography is “Mary Mapes Dodge,” by Susan R. Gannon and Ruth Anne Thompson (Twayne Publishers, 1992). Some early issues of St. Nicholas are online here. -- Greg Daugherty, 10/08

October 18, 2008

Claim to fame: Founder of Ebony, Jet, Negro Digest, and other magazines.

Quote: “I wasn’t trying to make history--I was trying to make money.”

Quote about him: “Only a handful of men and women leave an imprint on the conscience of a nation…. John Johnson was one of these men.” --Senator Barack Obama, speaking at Johnson’s funeral service in 2005.

Life in 300 words or less: John H. Johnson told the story many times (in fact I heard him tell it in a lecture to a bunch of us magazine editors at Columbia University around 1990): As an ambitious but cash-strapped young man in 1942 he borrowed $500, using his mother’s new furniture as collateral, to start what would one day become the Johnson Publishing empire. The $500 bought postage stamps for the first subscription solicitations for a new magazine Johnson was calling Negro Digest.

Negro Digest wasn’t the first African-American magazine. Earlier ones included the Moon, the Horizon, and the Crisis, all edited by W.E.B. DuBois, and many others. But Johnson’s magazine and those he would later launch may have been the most effective in bringing a mass market readership and mainstream national advertisers to their pages. Negro Digest was replaced by Jet, another small-format magazine, in 1952.

Meanwhile, in 1945, Johnson launched Ebony, larger in page size and a bigger gamble financially. Ebony took some of its look and inspiration from Life magazine, aiming in Johnson’s words to “mirror the happier side of Negro life--the positive, everyday achievements from Harlem to Hollywood. But when we talk about race as the No. 1 problem of America, we’ll talk turkey.”

Unlike Life, Ebony is still with us. Not all of Johnson’s magazines were successful, however. His short-lived titles included Tan Confessions, Copper Romance, and a pocket-size magazine called Hue.

For more: Johnson’s autobiography, “Succeeding Against the Odds,” written with his longtime colleague Lerone Bennett, Jr., was published by Warner Books in 1989 and is among the most readable books of its kind. A brief biography appears on the Johnson Publishing Company Web site. The October 2005 issue of Ebony, from which the inset photo above comes, also covers his life in highly illustrated detail. -- Greg Daugherty, 10/08

Lives in 500 words or less: Unlike their contemporaries DeWitt and Lila Acheson Wallace of Reader’s Digest fame, the Goulds were hired hands rather than owners and very much an editorial team. Before becoming co-editors of the Ladies’ Home Journal, they not only wrote magazine articles together, but a pair of plays and also a screenplay.

When they were named “equal” editors of the magazine in 1935 (he at a salary of $20,000, she at $5,000, of course), the Journal was in a slump, widely referred to as the Old Ladies Journal. As has since become standard operating procedure for remaking magazines, they started by sprucing up its look, then moved more deeply into content.

Reading through the inventory they had inherited from their predecessor, the Goulds decided to junk $380,000 worth of manuscripts plus another $170,000 in illustrations. (Those of us who have edited magazines in recent times are apt to find this doubly astounding, first for the money involved--and remember, we’re talking 1935 dollars--and simply that any magazine could build an inventory that big when most of us struggle to have even an article or two in the bank.)

Though the Goulds generally had the support of their powerful boss, George Horace Lorimer, their innovations faced opposition at every turn from the business side, as they later told the tale. Further complicating matters, the Journal was overshadowed by the larger and far more successful Saturday Evening Post, then the company’s flagship publication. When the Goulds bought serial rights to Eleanor Roosevelt’s memoirs, for example, they were considered traitors by their colleagues at the fervently anti-Roosevelt Post.

In 1942, the then-editor of the Post has the poor judgment to title an article “What’s Wrong With the Jews?” and Bruce was offered that job. Ultimately he turned it down, in part because Beatrice didn’t want to be either co-editor of the Post or sole editor of the Journal.

The Goulds remained at the Journal until 1962, a remarkable run of 27 years. In all, they seem to have enjoyed it. One chapter of their joint memoir, in fact, is called “Why Editing Is Fun.”

Lenore Hershey, a later editor of the Journal, recalled in her own autobiography, “Between the Covers: One Lady’s Own Journal” (Coward-McCann, 1983), that as a young girl reading the magazine she marveled at the Goulds’ lives: “They were always so sure, so joyous, so firm in their opinions about everything… Others at my age ached to be movie stars. To me, the Goulds had the ultimate mix of work and adventure.”

Beatrice Gould died at age 90, Bruce eight months later at 91.

For more: The Goulds are largely forgotten now and not much has been written about them, compared with other major-magazine editors of their day. Their memoir, “American Story” (Harper & Row, 1968), is long out of print but worth picking up if you see it. A little heavy on name-dropping (particularly of British royals the Iowa-born pair seem to have been enamored of), it's also full of contemporary magazine lore. -- Greg Daugherty, 10/08

October 04, 2008

Claim to fame: Founder of the magazine publishing company that still bears his name.

Quote: "The day an art director is stronger than the editor is a bad day for the magazine.”

Life in 400 words or less: I’ve met a surprising number of people, even in the magazine business, who don’t realize that Conde Nast was a real man, as opposed simply to the name of a company, perhaps founded by two people named Conde and Nast. But, indeed there was a fresh-and-blood Conde Nast. For vivid evidence of that, see Helen Lawrenson’s witty memoir “Stranger at the Party” (Random House, 1975), which includes, among many other things, a description of Nast lifting her skirt, removing his pince-nez glasses, and etc., etc., during what seems to have been a memorable cab ride.

With his terraced Park Avenue penthouse, almost limitless wealth, and a reputation for giving some of New York’s most remarkable parties, Nast created a life that seems like something out of a Depression-era escapist movie, with him as the tuxedoed millionaire character. Though he is likely to be remembered as the owner and publisher of magazines such as Vogue and Vanity Fair, I’m including him here because he had two essentially editorial insights that have had a powerful influence on magazines ever since.

The first was that editing for a mass audience, as was just about everybody else’s goal in those days, wasn’t the only way to go. He envisioned (and his editors created) magazines that served a narrow, and in his case, elite, audience. It helped that such people were also coveted by advertisers and that advertising agencies were willing to pay a premium to reach them. In our era, with mass-market magazines all but dead, and niches becoming narrower by the day, the man seems downright clairvoyant.

His second and smaller insight was also decades ahead of its time. Nast was a big believer in what he called “crowded pages,” jammed not with endless gray text but with as much stuff as possible. For example, he said, “[I]f you give a woman 5 hats to choose from she is not going to be as satisfied as if she had 20 hats to pick from.”

For more: Caroline Seebohm’s “The Man Who Was Vogue” (Viking Press, 1982) is probably the definitive biography. Benjamin Schwarz, literary editor of The Atlantic Monthly, recently referred to it as one of the two best biographies of an American magazine publisher. (The other, he says, is David Nasaw’s “The Chief: The Life and Times of William Randolph Hearst.”) -- Greg Daugherty, 10/08

September 27, 2008

Claim to fame: Built McClure’s into one of the first mass-market magazines, in part by charging 10 cents for a copy, half the price of many competing magazines, and raising ad rates as circulation grew. His grandson and biographer, Peter Lyon, wrote that McClure’s was “the most exciting, the liveliest, the best illustrated, the most handsomely dressed, the most interesting, and the most profitable” magazine of its day, which may well be true.

Quote: “[I]f I like a thing, then I know that millions will like it. My mind and my taste are so common that I’m the best editor.”

Another one: “I never get ideas sitting still.”

Life in 300 words or less: Samuel Sidney McClure, born in Ireland, arrived here poor, and worked his way through college before finding his calling in journalism. He was already a player in the newspaper syndication business (he even claimed, apparently exaggerating, to have invented it) when he decided to try his hand at a magazine. His hope, it seems, was to fill the magazine with the work of writers he already had relationships with, presumably at bargain prices.

His timing might have been better. The year McClure’s was launched, 1893, represented the start of one of the worst depressions the U.S. has ever seen. In a year or so, however, the magazine was modestly profitable, and not long thereafter hugely so. It attracted so many unsolicited manuscripts from would-be contributors that the staff kept them, by the thousands, in barrels.

Within a few years, and largely by accident, McClure’s evolved into the premier muckraking magazine of its day or any other. Its marquee writers included Ida Tarbell, who fearlessly took on John D. Rockefeller and the Standard Oil Trust in its pages; and Lincoln Steffens, whose “Shame of the Cities,” an expose of urban slums, was also first published there.

McClure the man eventually lost financial control of McClure’s the magazine. He and others made several attempts to bring it back, but it closed once and for all in 1933.

McClure had both fans and detractors. His own protégé Ida Tarbell ultimately summed him up as “an uncivilized, immoral, untutored natural man with enough canniness to keep himself out of jails and asylums.”

S.S. McClure died in 1949 at age 92, outliving both his influence and his namesake magazine.

For more: McClure’s “My Autobiography” (Frederick A. Stokes Co.), apparently ghostwritten by Willa Cather, who was also one of his editors, was published in 1914. A biography is “Success Story: The Life and Times of S.S. McClure,” by Peter Lyon (Scribner’s, 1963).

Postscript: My own copy of McClure’s autobiography was inscribed by its author to a friend whose wife apparently had literary ambitions, and it says a lot about McClure’s dark mood toward the end of his life. As far as I know this inscription, which I’m excerpting here, has never been published elsewhere. It is dated Thanksgiving 1943.

“I inscribe, this, my book to you with my very best wishes. You already have the greatest possible blessing on earth in the one you have chosen for your life companion.

“In one respect I hope she may fare much better than Mrs. McClure did; for she, like N-- possessed a rare gift as a writer. This I did not realize until too late and I deprived her of great opportunities for happiness and achievement….

September 20, 2008

Claims to fame: Founders of The Reader’s Digest, at one time the most widely read magazine in the world.

Quote: “I simply hunt for things that interest me, and if they do, I print them.” (DeWitt).

Lives in 500 words or less: Much as we like to gripe about how time-starved we are these days, the generation that walked the earth in the 1920s seems to have had the very same complaint. In fact, two of the most successful magazines of all time were created in response. Henry Luce and Briton Hadden’s Time, launched in 1923, clipped and rewrote newspaper stories. Even earlier, DeWitt and Lila Wallace’s Reader’s Digest, launched unsuccessfully in 1920 and then relaunched in 1922, clipped and condensed articles from other magazines.

Before the Digest would take on its famous Pleasantville address, it was headquartered in a Greenwich Village basement. Too poor to afford subscriptions to other magazines, DeWitt hung out at the New York Public Library, copying articles by hand and condensing as he went along.

Volume 1, number 1 (the 1922 version) explained the formula: “Thirty-one articles each month from leading magazines -each article of enduring value and interest, in condensed and compact form.” (Thirty-one articles meant, of course, about one a day for a month, a pace even the busiest Roaring Twenties types could presumably keep up with.) Contents of that issue included “How to Keep Young Mentally,” excerpted from The American Magazine; “Henry Ford, Dreamer and Worker,” from Review of Reviews; and “Advice from a President’s Physician,” from Good Housekeeping.

DeWitt Wallace, Lila Bell Acheson (using her maiden name), and two others appeared on the 1922 masthead as editors. Acheson would start to use her married name in the magazine only in 1938. Whatever her early editorial contributions may have been, by that time she was devoting herself primarily to art collecting, interior decoration, and philanthropy.

For its first 33 years, the Digest took no advertising, relying entirely on subscription revenue. Fortunately there were plenty of subscribers to rely on. By the time of DeWitt’s death, the magazine claimed a circulation of 30.5 million copies in 163 countries and 16 languages. It would also apply its formula to books, with a highly profitable Condensed Books series that packed abbreviated versions of four or five current bestsellers into a single hardcover.

The Wallaces had no children but adopted and doted on numerous causes, including Colonial Williamsburg, the Juilliard School, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the New York Public Library, whose current periodical room is named in DeWitt Wallace’s honor. Another of DeWitt’s pet projects was Richard M. Nixon, whose checkered career he advanced via cash and other means.

If the Wallaces were practically saints to their admirers, they were a more sinister force to many others. In a 1942 article, the writer George Seldes accused DeWitt of spreading pro-Nazi propaganda and called him “the most powerful reactionary propagandist in America.” Fact magazine, another investigative organ, titled its 1966 takedown “The Pleasantville Monster,” calling The Digest “dishonest, ignorant, irresponsible, John Birchite, anti-Jewish, & anti-Negro.”

DeWitt Wallace was often accused (and probably rightly so) of being anti-union, but he was notably paternalistic toward his own employees, rewarding them richly and providing them with perks galore.

For more: A relatively rosy version of the Digest saga is offered in James Playsted Wood’s “Of Lasting Interest” (Doubleday, revised and updated edition, 1967). Later interpretations are “Theirs Was the Kingdom,” by John Heidenry (W.W. Norton & Co., 1993), and “American Dreamers,” by Peter Canning (Simon & Schuster, 1996).

Full disclosure: I worked for the Reader’s Digest Association in its post-Wallace years, first as a senior staff editor on the flagship magazine in 1996 and 1997, and then as editor-in-chief of a Digest-owned magazine called New Choices from 1997 to 2002. Only a handful of my colleagues had known either Wallace, though DeWitt was still affectionately referred to throughout the building as “Wally.” Some welcome traces of the old paternalism remained, including the priceless paintings for all to enjoy (many of which were soon auctioned off), free turkeys at holiday time, garden plots for employees, and a garage where you could have your car tuned up while you attended to somebody’s prose. -- Greg Daugherty, 9/08

September 13, 2008

Claim to fame: Founder and editor of Success, a pioneering self-help magazine.

Quote: “Success is the child of drudgery and perseverance. It cannot be coaxed or bribed; pay the price and it is yours.”

Another one: “He can who thinks he can.”

Life in 400 words or less: In the long-ago era when male magazine readers were as eager to improve themselves as their female counterparts were, Success occupied a special place on the periodical racks. The magazine was the brainchild of Orison Swett Marden, a prolific self-help book author, whose own life story was perhaps his richest source of inspiration.

Orphaned at age 7, he put himself through Harvard Medical School and Boston University Law School, attending the two programs simultaneously and graduating from them a year apart (1881 and 1882). He was also a successful caterer and hotel manager, eventually drawing on all that experience when he became an author. Frank Munsey, a leading magazine entrepreneur and friend of Marden, supposedly lamented that, "If Doctor Marden had not written his first book he would have been a millionaire. He had a genius for hotel making."

Marden launched his first Success magazine in 1897 and built it into a substantial property, only to see it fail in 1912. In 1918, heeding his own advice to persevere, he gave it another shot, with New Success. That iteration, eventually just called Success again, would survive Marden himself. He died in 1924, and the magazine continued until 1927. (Several later Success magazines, including one I once worked for, have continued the name or some variation of it.)

A typical table of contents for Marden’s Success might include a serialized novel, an article or two on current affairs, some poetry and, of course, one or more uplifting pieces on topics such as “Minimizing Difficulties” and “Keeping Fit for Work.” Theodore Dreiser, then a young freelancer, was a frequent contributor, interviewing big shots like Andrew Carnegie and Thomas Edison.

While Marden had countless fans and his ideas are rebottled by self-help authors to this day, he also had his detractors. H.L. Mencken, perhaps not surprisingly, had little use for him. “It was the heyday of some of the most banal eminentissimos that even the United States… had ever known,” Mencken recalled in “My Life as Author and Editor” (Knopf, 1993), citing Marden and eight other contemporaries. “The spectacle they provided was a gaudy one, and I surely enjoyed it as much as most, but meanwhile my hand itched for a club to belabor them to the glory of God.”

For more: The standard biography, though a bit gushy by today’s standards, is “The Life Story of Orison Swett Marden, A Man Who Benefited Men,” by Margaret Connolly (Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1925). Marden himself wrote dozens of self-improvement books and pamphlets, including “How to Get What You Want,” “Making Friends With Your Nerves,” “Pushing to the Front,” and (worth seeking out for its title alone) “Self-Discovery: Why Remain a Dwarf?” -- Greg Daugherty, 9/08